


above and below

by marginaliana



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 17:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12303657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: The cherry tree spoke to her on a Wednesday.





	above and below

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Allekha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allekha/gifts).



The cherry tree spoke to her on a Wednesday, her third day of work in the building on K Street but the first in which she had a lunch hour to herself. The job was a good one, an honest one. Necessary. But it was only a job, not a dream. She had her notebook for dreaming.

It was a relief to escape from artificial cold out into the humid heat of the street – she went to the shaded bench at the corner of the nearby park, though she would have sat in full sun if it had been the only choice against inside. But there _was_ shade. The cherry spread overhead, a soft interweaving of pink and white against the crisp blue of the sky, as if everything were inverted, as if the tree were a picnic blanket and the sky an off-color expanse of grass. She breathed in deeply, saving up the scent of it for the hours yet to come. She opened her notebook.

The cherry whispered to her. Wind, she thought, or a distant group of people, perhaps a protest march – but she couldn't concentrate and after a while she closed the notebook, capped her pen, and simply listened. 

A rustle. A sigh. Something like crying, but not quite. Then, at last, voices. "We are here," they said. "We are here, we are here." It was almost one voice, but not quite – it was a thousand voices susurrating in nearly-overlapping waves. "We are here."

Was it merely imagination, her desire to reach something beyond office life? Was it something more? "Where are you?" she asked quietly.

"Here," the voices said. "Above and below." 

It was a sound formed of movement, leaf on leaf, petal on petal. She turned; the cherry's trunk was thick, pitted with rough horizontal stripes. 

She put her palm to it. "Here? Above and—"

"Here," the voices said. "They buried us here." Suddenly the voices diverged, sentences and words overlapping so that she had to close her eyes to make them out. 

"An unmarked grave."

"So many of us."

"They were afraid."

"They were ashamed."

"Wanted to erase us."

"They planted this tree to hide our ugliness with beauty."

"But we fed it with our bones and our flesh."

"We watered it with our blood."

" _We_ made it beautiful."

She smoothed her thumb across a shadowed ridge of bark. "You filled it with your voices."

"Yes."

"Yes."

" _Yes_."

She opened her eyes. "What do you need? What can I do?" The cherry trembled under her hand.

"You have words," the voices said, together once more. "You can speak so people hear."

"I— yes," she said. "I can."

"Speak for us, then," said the voices. "Find our history. Tell our story."

Truths like this were hidden well. It could be years of work. 

But it could be a dream. It could be _her_ dream. She flipped open her notebook to a clean, fresh page. She uncapped her pen. "Let's start with your names."


End file.
